Time continued to pass, and Logos grew.
The seasons shifted over Laos Keep without fanfare or festival. Winter bled into the shy green of spring, spring into the hot, lazy summer days when the air shimmered above the stone walls, and summer gave way again to the long, wet autumns for which the province was known. Rain turned the highland paths to rivers of mud. The wind carried the scent of pine and iron from the surrounding hills.
Within the keep, life followed its own rhythm — slow, deliberate, and wholly detached from the turning of the world beyond its black walls. Courtiers came and went, carrying messages for the Baron. Servants performed their duties with the unthinking efficiency of habit. And somewhere in a quiet wing, an heir grew up almost entirely unnoticed.
Logos hardly cried. He hardly laughed. His childhood — if it could be called that — was marked not by noise and play, but by silence. He studied people and objects with the same unblinking patience, as though every movement, every sound, every flicker of light was a puzzle to be dissected and understood.
In the kitchens, the maids whispered when they thought Lucy was out of earshot.
"Doesn't blink enough," one said, shoving dough into a pan.
"Doesn't act like a child," another replied.
One lowered her voice further. "Maybe he's a demon? You've seen those eyes… they don't look right."
Some claimed his eyes seemed to reflect more than they should — as if they caught the glimmer of thoughts no child could possibly have.
Lucy ignored them. Or rather, she refused to let idle superstition shape her care. She had no illusions about the boy's strangeness, but to her, it was just that — strangeness, not wickedness. She fed him, clothed him, and, on her own initiative, began to teach him. After all, every child deserved care, no matter their quirks or appearance.
As the seasons turned over the plateau, the boy named Logos Laos grew — tall for his age, lean, and watchful. The Baron and Baroness maintained their usual distance, acknowledging him only when custom demanded.
Lucy tried, from time to time, to coax him into the noisy chaos that most children seemed to enjoy.
"Come now, Master Logos," she said one bright afternoon, rolling a carved wooden ball toward him across the nursery floor. "You're meant to chase it, not just watch it roll."
Logos glanced at the ball, then at her, his black eyes unreadable. Slowly, as if calculating the optimal moment to humor her, he reached out and gave it the lightest push. It rolled lazily back, bumping against the base of a chair.
"That's not playing," she teased, but he only looked at her as though silently disagreeing.
Another time, she tried a different approach. From a small chest, she took out a set of tin soldiers — a gift from a visiting merchant that the Baron had passed to her without comment.
"These are the king's men," she explained, setting them out on the low table. "They fight to protect the land."
Logos reached for them at once, but not to clash them together as other boys might. Instead, he arranged them in an exact, symmetrical formation, spacing them evenly, as if copying some unseen diagram in his head.
"Aww, trying to play king?" Lucy chuckled, picking him up and ignoring the faint unease in her chest.
But it continued. By his first birthday, he was mimicking words with uncanny accuracy — not the half-garbled babble of toddlers, but precise echoes of tone and inflection. By his second, he could read short sentences. By his third, he could pick his way through basic books without being guided, turning the pages with patient care.
Lucy kept her silence on the matter for a long time. She had tried, in those early years, to tell his parents. Each year, she would try again — presenting his progress with quiet pride, hoping for the barest spark of interest. But each time, the Baron dismissed her with the same bored wave of his hand, and the Baroness with the same polite indifference.
The last attempt had been different. She had spoken too boldly, saying that their son was far from ordinary and deserved their attention. The Baron's eyes had gone cold, and a single word from him had summoned a guard. She did not see the blow coming, only felt the sharp heat of pain as she was struck across the hand with the butt of a riding crop. The skin split. Blood welled.
"Another word, and you'll keep that tongue of yours in a box," the Baron had said.
It was the first and only time he had addressed her directly in years.
Days later, in the quiet of the nursery, Logos noticed.
"Why are you doing this?"
Lucy looked up from her sewing, startled. It was the first time in a long while he had spoken a full sentence to her without prompting. His small hand reached out, touching the faint scar on her knuckle where the wound had healed.
"They hit you," he said simply.
"It is nothing," she replied, forcing her voice into its usual calm.
But his gaze did not move from her hand. He seemed to weigh her answer, then look away without further comment.
That night, as rain pattered softly against the windows and the keep settled into sleep, Lucy wondered whether the boy's strange stillness was only a matter of temperament — or if, beneath that unblinking calm, something sharper was quietly taking shape.